3 of the Most Under-Used Email Recruitment Tips Guaranteed to Attract New Candidates

3 of the Most Under-Used Email Recruitment Tips Guaranteed to Attract New Candidates

Recruitment can be a thankless task. Some days, you’ll put in a hard shift and get no luck; other days, everything seems to go your way. The trouble? It’s difficult to tell what will make one day a success, and another day… Not so successful. So how do can you make sure that you grab a candidate’s attention, and start really getting through to them?

Here’s how. Use our candidate email outreach tips and templates to ensure you get those key candidates on board. At the end of this article, you’ll be well on your way to getting more replies, more engagement and more vacancies filled.

Less Is More

When you’re trying to get through to potential candidates (whether they are in a current position or they are unemployed) you have to keep things simple. That’s why you should always remember that less is more.

The longer the email your candidate has to read, the less likely that they’ll read it and reply to you.

Long subject lines are bad. They put the recipient off by giving them too much to read and revealing too much of what you’re trying to say, instead of intriguing them to open your email.

Always Be Closing (even in your emails!)

We’re sure that you’re familiar with the sales term always be closing (or ‘ABC’). Well, sales and recruitment are two peas in a pod. In sales, you have to keep your eye on moving the customer towards a sale at every stage of your interaction. In our case, that’s moving our contacts into the interview and recruitment process.

That’s why at every point during your email, you should be aimed at ‘closing the deal’. Here’s an example to illustrate what we mean.

Re: ‘Fast track training and career improvement- interested?’

Hi Ellen,

How are you today? Enjoying the summer sunshine in Newcastle? I’ve been trawling through LinkedIn trying to find somebody who would fit a role that we have open. I saw your post a while back about how much you love the idea of exciting workplaces—is that still true?

Well, we’re recruiting for the fastest growing website design business in the North-East, who offer continual training, and great career opportunities. If you’d like to know more, please drop me a quick email. If you’d also like to have a chat about other career directions you’re working towards, we can discuss that too.

Talk soon,

[ABCXYZ]

Add Personalised Touches to Your Email Content

It’s important that you get the ratio of personalisation right. Why? Because you want to send as many emails as possible, but not have them come across as mass marketing. Today’s internet-savvy demographics can spot unedited templates from a mile away, so it’s important that if you do use a template, you add at least one or two personalised touches to mitigate that.

There are all sorts of ways to make your emails more personal. Chief among them is to make sure that you use your potential candidate’s name! A top tip is to use the candidate’s CV to garner information about them—their experience, their career wishes and more. If you are still unsure about the word count or how to get the balance right with your emails, check out this article.

Ready to Get Started?

So, if you think you’re ready, we’ve brought together each of the tips above into a readymade template for you to use. Underneath the template, we’ve also included a section of notes, so that you can see each of the tips in action.

Re: Management opportunity for Alex

Hi Alex,

Are you well today? Out enjoying the sunshine? I wish I could say the same!

Your CV said that you were looking to move into management. Still interested? That’s why I’m emailing today. We have a killer opening available at [business] which we think would be a great fit for you.

[full time/part time]

[location]

A salary / wage of [amount]

As things stand, the job isn’t currently being advertised publicly because we’re looking for someone with an extra-special skillset with a great track record. We think you would be a perfect fit for the position! The job is going to be advertised in the next few weeks if we do not find an available candidate so please let me know if this is something that interests you.
[Sign off]

So now you’re ready to review you current processes and look at sending out that killer email. If you get it right (which you will) you will definitely reach more of those golden goose candidates that your clients will be stunned by. Also you’ll probably want to make sure you’re not falling into any of these email clichés as this can be as bad as not sending out an email at all.